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The classical concept of Darwinian natural selection does not encompass the varieties of new structures and functions that arise when separate entities interact in useful ways, Gene Levinson asserts in Rethinking Evolution: The Revolution That’s Hiding in Plain Sight. His updated evolutionary theory, he says, reflects recent discoveries in molecular, cellular, and developmental biology.
In What the Dog Knows, Cat Warren tells how she transformed her rambunctious German shepherd, Solo, recognized as having a “good nose,” into a cadaver dog. Warren gives young readers an introduction to the science of scent and the process of training dogs to follow a scent through a swamp, below ground, and even below the surface of a lake in this adaptation of her 2013 book on the same topic.
In City in a Forest, the first novel by Ginger Pinholster, longtime PIO for AAAS, two women strive to prevent a developer from building luxury condos on verdant but lead-contaminated land near their childhood homes. One of the women works as a PIO for an environmental non-profit, while the other, an artist, draws on personal and cultural history to produce her fanciful sculptures and masks.
Remember the 1982 Tylenol poisonings? Bill Grigg does. He was the FDA's news director then. That experience sparked his novel focusing on intentional food poisoning, A Perfectly Natural Murder. Its hapless hero is a PIO for an insurance company whose dinner party was co-opted by a colleague with a dark secret. The hero's father, a medical reporter, helps move the investigation along.
Physics governs the world we live in. It underlies everyday technology such as smartphones and medical imaging devices, and influences major societal concerns such as nuclear proliferation, energy use, and climate change. In Physics: A Very Short Introduction, Sidney Perkowitz offers lay readers a guide to what physics covers, how physicists carry out research, and why this research matters.
From Jules Verne’s novels in the 1860s to Disney’s “Man in Space” 1950s TV series that captivated Dwight Eisenhower among others, popular culture often presciently described space travel. In Destination Moon: The Remarkable and Improbable Voyage of Apollo 11, Richard Maurer focuses on six people plus co-workers who helped transform scifi into reality. Posters and photos round out the text.
Soviet cosmonaut Valentina Tereshkova was the first woman to travel to space. Software engineer Margaret Hamilton’s programs proved crucial to the success of Apollo 11’s July 20, 1969 moon landing. In Heroes of the Space Age: Incredible Stories of the Famous and Forgotten Men and Women Who Took Humanity to the Stars, Rod Pyle describes the lives and motivations of these and other space pioneers.
Having experienced persistent effects of a tick bite, Kris Newby helped create the 2009 Lyme documentary, Under Our Skin. In 2013, she learned scientist Willy Burgdorfer, who had identified the Lyme disease-causing bacterium, attributed Lyme’s initial outbreak to a bioweapons release. Her book Bitten: The Secret History of Lyme Disease and Biological Weapons explores that astonishing claim.
Our car-centric culture has been designing walking out of our lives for nearly a hundred years, Antonia Malchik asserts. Forgoing walking has eroded our sense of community, made us more anxious about time, cut us off from nature, and boosted obesity and air pollution, she says. In A Walking Life: Reclaiming Our Health and Our Freedom One Step at a Time, Malchik calls for a U-turn.